Chrysler Museum of Art

In any ranking of American art museums, the College of William and Mary's Muscarelle Museum of Art is far from the largest, oldest or best-endowed. But that hasn't stopped it from playing big — and doing so with a kind of ambition and success that's outshined many others. Graduate and one-time museum intern Aaron De Groft took the helm as director a decade ago. And the museum has staged exhibit after exhibit designed to attract national and even international attention, beginning in 2006 with a major traveling show of Italian Old Master still lifes to which it added — as a bonus for its local audience — a landmark Caravaggio canvas considered to be one of...